When we have been badly hurt before, we have the tendency to play it safe and engage in a myriad forms of defense mechanisms and this caution serves us only up until a certain extent.

When we have recovered, it does not pay to continue hiding in our shells and letting life and opportunities pass us by. It pays to step out of our comfort zone to give life and love a chance.

As adults, we learn to down play our interest in someone and engage in all manner of retractable gestures of flirtatious remarks so that any time a rejection might come up, we can easily wash our hands and spare our egos that what we said was meant in a merely friendly or playful manner.

We learn to watch the other person and mimic their cues and give an equal and proportionate response so as to not give our position away. While this keeps us safe, it also keeps us where we are.

This is not to say that every single unstudied and unregulated impulse must be indulged in and yet when we err on the side of caution, we may be safe but yet we might be missing out on a possible avenue of experiences.